laptop per child

The One Laptop Per Child Project and Microsoft plan to make both Windows and Linux available on a version of the project’s XO Laptop. It means the little green laptop would now run Windows XP as well as Linux. According to Nicholas Negroponte:

OLPC is not in the open-source advocacy business … we’re in the education business.

This will not just kill enthusiasm for the project but the project itself. Windows XP will not run smoothly on low end hardware. It will be now dual-boot system with Sugar and Microsoft’s Student Innovation Suite, a US$3 software (Windows XP, Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007, Microsoft Math 3.0, Learning Essentials 2.0 for Microsoft Office and Windows Live Mail software).

This is not good news as it may increase the project cost. The One Laptop Per Child Project (OLPC) and Microsoft are working together to develop a dual-boot system to put both Linux and Windows on laptops aimed at kids in developing countries, the head of OLPC said in an interview Tuesday. The OLPC laptop currently runs a Fedora-based Linux OS, and Microsoft has offered a version of Windows XP for the laptop project. There had been speculation that OLPC would simply offer two separate laptop PCs, but a dual-boot system could remove the need to offer two separate laptops.